README for Ideology on Both Sides: Judges' and Governments' Preferences at the CJEU (J-Pref)
Author: Silje Synnøve Lyder Hermansen
Affiliation: Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen
Version: 1.0
Date: 2025-11-12
DOI: 10.7910/DVN/XXXXXX
Email: silje.hermansen@ifs.ku.dk

1. Overview
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This dataset links ideological profiles of judges at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to those of EU member-state governments at the time of appointment and decision-making. 
It provides harmonized preference scores on two dimensions—economic left-right and European integration—based on Manifesto Project data and ParlGov cabinet information. 
The data allow comparisons of judicial and governmental preferences within a common European policy space.

These operationalizations have been used in prior work to explain both judicial appointments and court outcomes 
(Hermansen 2020; Šadl & Hermansen 2024; Hermansen & Voeten 2025; Hermansen & Naurin 2025).

2. Files in this deposit
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judge_pref.csv           – Judge-level data (unit: judge)
gvt_pref.csv             – Government-level data (unit: member state × year)
codebook_ideology_on_both_sides.pdf – Full documentation of variable coding
README.txt               – This file

3. Data structure
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The data consist of two data frames:

• judge_pref lists all judges appointed to the Court over its history, reporting assigned preferences and key identifiers for merging with other data (e.g., IUROPA or CJEU case datasets).

• gvt_pref lists all EU governments at each date since the establishment of the European Union, reporting their assigned ideological preferences and merge identifiers.

Temporal coverage: 1954–2023  
Spatial coverage: EU-27 plus historical member states.

4. Key variables (summary)
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free_economy           – Preference on economic left-right issues (higher = more market-oriented)
integration            – Preference on European integration (higher = more pro-EU)
name                   – Judge name
iuropa_judge_id        – Unique judge identifier (Brekke et al. 2023)
nationality            – Member-state nationality
cabinet_id             – ParlGov identifier for appointing government
cabinet_name           – Name of cabinet (usually PM surname)
date                   – Date of government observation

5. Measuring ideology
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Judges’ ideological orientations are proxied by the preferences of the appointing government. 
Government positions are calculated as weighted averages of cabinet parties’ manifesto scores, using parliamentary seat shares as weights. 
Manifesto positions are computed following Gabel & Huber (2000) on the full MARPOR corpus. 
Economic and integration dimensions draw on indicator categories 401–414 and 107–110 respectively (see codebook for full definitions).

6. Sources
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• Council of Ministers appointment decisions (Eur-Lex)  
• ParlGov data on governments and cabinet composition (Döring 2013)  
• Manifesto Project (Lehmann et al. 2025) for party program coding  
• IUROPA (Brekke et al. 2023) for judicial identifiers

7. Recommended citation
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Hermansen, Silje Synnøve Lyder. 2025. Ideology on Both Sides: Judges’ and Governments’ Preferences at the CJEU (J-Pref). Harvard Dataverse. V1. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/XXXXXX

8. References
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Brekke, Stein Arne, Joshua C. Fjelstul, Silje Synnøve Lyder Hermansen, and Daniel Naurin. 2023. “The CJEU Database Platform: Decisions and Decision-Makers.” *Journal of Law and Courts.*

Döring, Holger. 2013. “The Collective Action of Data Collection: A Data Infrastructure on Parties, Elections and Cabinets.” *European Union Politics* 14(1): 161–78.

Gabel, Matthew J., and John D. Huber. 2000. “Putting Parties in Their Place: Inferring Party Left-Right Ideological Positions from Party Manifestos Data.” *American Journal of Political Science* 44(1): 94–103.

Lehmann, Pola et al. 2025. *The Manifesto Data Collection (MARPOR), Version 2025a.* WZB Berlin Social Science Center / University of Göttingen.

Šadl, Urška, and Silje Hermansen. 2024. “The European Court of Justice, an Able and Unwilling Lawmaker.” In *Revisiting Judicial Politics in the European Union,* Edward Elgar Publishing.

Hermansen, Silje Synnøve Lyder. 2020. “Building Legitimacy: Strategic Case Allocations in the CJEU.” *Journal of European Public Policy* 27(8): 1215–35.

Hermansen, Silje Synnøve Lyder, and Daniel Naurin. 2025. “Shaping the Bench: The Effect of Ideology and Influence on Judicial Reappointments.” *Journal of Politics.*

Hermansen, Silje Synnøve Lyder, and Erik Voeten. 2025. “Ideology and Agenda Setting on the Court of Justice of European Union: Evidence from Anti-Trust and State Aid Cases.” *APSA Preprint*.

